Gunel Mukhtarova
Chapter 5
Public Policy
Public policy is important in its own right and as an influence on public management, but again raises the question
as to whether there is still something distinctive about public administration.
Public policy is yet another way of studying and characterizing the interaction between government and its clients,
while policy research or policy analysis are other terms for much the same thing. Public policy could be seen as a
reaction to and critique of the public administration tradition or as the long- overdue adoption of formal techniques
by the public sector.
Another usage of the term ‘public policy’ is that used by economists, by which they mean the application of
economic methods and models to government.
The argument here is that there are now two public policy approaches, each with its own concerns and emphases.
The first is termed ‘policy analysis’; the second, ‘political public policy’. The policy analysis people are those who
have continued to develop the field in the way it started, that is, by the use of sometimes highly abstract statistics
and mathematical models, with the focus on decision- making and policy formation. Political public policy theorists
are more interested in the results or outcomes of public policy, the political interactions determining a particular
event, and in policy areas – health, education, welfare, the environment, for example – rather than in the use of
statistical methods.
Public policy could now be considered either as a separate paradigm, competing with public administration and
public management or as a set of analytical methods applicable to both.
The extent of its critique of the traditional model was to argue for more usage of empirical methodology to assist or
even sup- plant decision-making, rather than more fundamental questioning.
he policy analysis school in particular has certainly passed its peak while political public policy seems
indistinguishable from public management. However, public policy and policy analysis remain useful in bringing
attention to what governments do, as opposed to the public administration concern with how they operate, and in
using empirical methods to analyse policy.
Public policy, administration and management
Public policy is the output of government. This neatly avoids some of the problems with attempts at more precise
meanings or needing to specify the exact kind of output for particular circumstances. While governments provide
goods and services, they do so according to express policies announced at some time. The process is described as
being diffuse; the formulation of public policy is an elusive process. This is far more realistic than regarding policy-
making as either to be carried out by politicians under the traditional model of administration, or through some other
idealized process, which can be modelled. No one really knows where policies are derived from, other than through
the internal political processes of governments, in which the bureaucracy is as much a political actor as are outside
interest groups or politicians. Lynn expresses this idea of constraints more precisely. Public policy-making does not
occur in a vacuum, there are constraints of organization, institutions, interest groups and even ‘societal and cultural
influences’. It is easy to find more complex definitions, but public policy is to be regarded here as the output of
government and policy analysis as the more formal, empirical approach to deriving and explaining policy.
From its beginnings, public policy analysts were a rather different set of people, more concerned with analytical
methods and numbers as opposed to what they regarded as the generalist approaches of public administration. Public
administration was considered the domain of the gifted amateur, where governing wisely and well had little to do
with any kind of method or statistic. Public policy is expressly more ‘political’ than is public administration and has
also emphasized more technical, even mathematical approaches to decision-making.
It is rather more difficult to separate public policy from political science and sometimes it would be hard to decide
whether a particular study is one of public policy or politics
, Gunel Mukhtarova
Public policy is different from the traditional model of public administration in that it recognizes that there are
political processes within the administration leading to policy. It is, therefore, more ‘political’ than public
administration. It is an attempt to apply the methods of political science to policy areas but has concerns with
processes inside the bureaucracy, so is more related to public administration.
The relationship with public management is also difficult to pin down. It is argued here that public management is
superseding traditional public administration and is a more realistic description of what actually happens in the
public sector. However, the relationship between managerialism and public policy is not as simple as one
superseding the other. Public management uses empirical models, but these are usually those of economics. The
policy analysis approach may use economics as only one of the many possible methodologies, most of which are
inductive, whereas economics is deductive.
Policy analysis
Public policy began with the systematic analysis of data for governmental purposes. The word ‘statistics’ derives
from ‘state’, but policy was not greatly informed by numbers though there were some experiments in the use of
statistics from the 1930s through to the 1960s.
Instead of providing an answer by themselves, empirical methods were to be used to aid decision-making. While
few of the early policy analysts saw them- selves as decision-makers (though it was a charge levelled against them)
that was the extent of the analyses used. Third-stage policy analysis is supposed to be a supplement to the political
process and not a replacement of it. Analysis assists in the mounting of arguments and is used by the different sides
in a particular debate. All participants in the policy process use statistics as ammunition to reinforce their arguments.
The collection of data has greatly improved and the ways of processing numbers are better than before.
Empirical methods
Much has been said in passing of the empirical methods and skills needed by policy analysis and policy analysts. In
one view, two sets of skills are needed. First, ‘scientific skills’ which have three categories: information-structuring
skills which ‘sharpen the analyst’s ability to clarify policy-related ideas and to examine their correspondence to real
world events’; information-collection skills which ‘provide the analyst with approaches and tools for making
accurate observations of persons, objects, or events’; and information-analysis skills which ‘guide the analyst in
drawing conclusions from empirical evidence’. These scientific skills are not independent but rather interrelated;
they are also related to what they call ‘facilitative skills’ (1989, p. 25) such as policy, planning and managerial skills.
One can admire the idea that societal improvement can result from empirical decision-making methods. There are
undoubtedly some areas in which these techniques can be very useful, and, even in matters of complex policy,
information may be able to be acquired which it could not by normal means. For example, monitoring or controlling
road traffic is a governmental function everywhere. Traffic studies have always been done at the relatively low level
of counting cars. When this is extended through decision analysis, by taking numbers to a higher level, or building
scenarios into computer-based models, it is possible to predict traffic patterns in future, to decide where to place
traffic signals, or to use cost–benefit analysis to decide between two sites for a traffic interchange. In this kind of
example, empirical methods undoubtedly would improve the making of policy. However, there are relatively few
such mundane problems. Public policy is usually complex and has no easy answers.
Policy process models
There are almost as many models of the policy process as there are public policy theorists, all deriving to some
extent from Lasswell (1971). Anderson’s model of the policy process has five stages: problem identification and
agenda formation, formulation, adoption, implementation, and evaluation
Quade (1982) also sees five elements: problem formulation, searching for alter- natives, forecasting the future
environment, modelling the impacts of alternatives, and evaluating the alternatives. Stokey and Zeckhauser (1978)
also set out a five-step process in which the analyst is to: determine the underlying problem and objectives to be
pursued, set out possible alternatives, predict the consequences of each, determine the criteria for measuring the
Chapter 5
Public Policy
Public policy is important in its own right and as an influence on public management, but again raises the question
as to whether there is still something distinctive about public administration.
Public policy is yet another way of studying and characterizing the interaction between government and its clients,
while policy research or policy analysis are other terms for much the same thing. Public policy could be seen as a
reaction to and critique of the public administration tradition or as the long- overdue adoption of formal techniques
by the public sector.
Another usage of the term ‘public policy’ is that used by economists, by which they mean the application of
economic methods and models to government.
The argument here is that there are now two public policy approaches, each with its own concerns and emphases.
The first is termed ‘policy analysis’; the second, ‘political public policy’. The policy analysis people are those who
have continued to develop the field in the way it started, that is, by the use of sometimes highly abstract statistics
and mathematical models, with the focus on decision- making and policy formation. Political public policy theorists
are more interested in the results or outcomes of public policy, the political interactions determining a particular
event, and in policy areas – health, education, welfare, the environment, for example – rather than in the use of
statistical methods.
Public policy could now be considered either as a separate paradigm, competing with public administration and
public management or as a set of analytical methods applicable to both.
The extent of its critique of the traditional model was to argue for more usage of empirical methodology to assist or
even sup- plant decision-making, rather than more fundamental questioning.
he policy analysis school in particular has certainly passed its peak while political public policy seems
indistinguishable from public management. However, public policy and policy analysis remain useful in bringing
attention to what governments do, as opposed to the public administration concern with how they operate, and in
using empirical methods to analyse policy.
Public policy, administration and management
Public policy is the output of government. This neatly avoids some of the problems with attempts at more precise
meanings or needing to specify the exact kind of output for particular circumstances. While governments provide
goods and services, they do so according to express policies announced at some time. The process is described as
being diffuse; the formulation of public policy is an elusive process. This is far more realistic than regarding policy-
making as either to be carried out by politicians under the traditional model of administration, or through some other
idealized process, which can be modelled. No one really knows where policies are derived from, other than through
the internal political processes of governments, in which the bureaucracy is as much a political actor as are outside
interest groups or politicians. Lynn expresses this idea of constraints more precisely. Public policy-making does not
occur in a vacuum, there are constraints of organization, institutions, interest groups and even ‘societal and cultural
influences’. It is easy to find more complex definitions, but public policy is to be regarded here as the output of
government and policy analysis as the more formal, empirical approach to deriving and explaining policy.
From its beginnings, public policy analysts were a rather different set of people, more concerned with analytical
methods and numbers as opposed to what they regarded as the generalist approaches of public administration. Public
administration was considered the domain of the gifted amateur, where governing wisely and well had little to do
with any kind of method or statistic. Public policy is expressly more ‘political’ than is public administration and has
also emphasized more technical, even mathematical approaches to decision-making.
It is rather more difficult to separate public policy from political science and sometimes it would be hard to decide
whether a particular study is one of public policy or politics
, Gunel Mukhtarova
Public policy is different from the traditional model of public administration in that it recognizes that there are
political processes within the administration leading to policy. It is, therefore, more ‘political’ than public
administration. It is an attempt to apply the methods of political science to policy areas but has concerns with
processes inside the bureaucracy, so is more related to public administration.
The relationship with public management is also difficult to pin down. It is argued here that public management is
superseding traditional public administration and is a more realistic description of what actually happens in the
public sector. However, the relationship between managerialism and public policy is not as simple as one
superseding the other. Public management uses empirical models, but these are usually those of economics. The
policy analysis approach may use economics as only one of the many possible methodologies, most of which are
inductive, whereas economics is deductive.
Policy analysis
Public policy began with the systematic analysis of data for governmental purposes. The word ‘statistics’ derives
from ‘state’, but policy was not greatly informed by numbers though there were some experiments in the use of
statistics from the 1930s through to the 1960s.
Instead of providing an answer by themselves, empirical methods were to be used to aid decision-making. While
few of the early policy analysts saw them- selves as decision-makers (though it was a charge levelled against them)
that was the extent of the analyses used. Third-stage policy analysis is supposed to be a supplement to the political
process and not a replacement of it. Analysis assists in the mounting of arguments and is used by the different sides
in a particular debate. All participants in the policy process use statistics as ammunition to reinforce their arguments.
The collection of data has greatly improved and the ways of processing numbers are better than before.
Empirical methods
Much has been said in passing of the empirical methods and skills needed by policy analysis and policy analysts. In
one view, two sets of skills are needed. First, ‘scientific skills’ which have three categories: information-structuring
skills which ‘sharpen the analyst’s ability to clarify policy-related ideas and to examine their correspondence to real
world events’; information-collection skills which ‘provide the analyst with approaches and tools for making
accurate observations of persons, objects, or events’; and information-analysis skills which ‘guide the analyst in
drawing conclusions from empirical evidence’. These scientific skills are not independent but rather interrelated;
they are also related to what they call ‘facilitative skills’ (1989, p. 25) such as policy, planning and managerial skills.
One can admire the idea that societal improvement can result from empirical decision-making methods. There are
undoubtedly some areas in which these techniques can be very useful, and, even in matters of complex policy,
information may be able to be acquired which it could not by normal means. For example, monitoring or controlling
road traffic is a governmental function everywhere. Traffic studies have always been done at the relatively low level
of counting cars. When this is extended through decision analysis, by taking numbers to a higher level, or building
scenarios into computer-based models, it is possible to predict traffic patterns in future, to decide where to place
traffic signals, or to use cost–benefit analysis to decide between two sites for a traffic interchange. In this kind of
example, empirical methods undoubtedly would improve the making of policy. However, there are relatively few
such mundane problems. Public policy is usually complex and has no easy answers.
Policy process models
There are almost as many models of the policy process as there are public policy theorists, all deriving to some
extent from Lasswell (1971). Anderson’s model of the policy process has five stages: problem identification and
agenda formation, formulation, adoption, implementation, and evaluation
Quade (1982) also sees five elements: problem formulation, searching for alter- natives, forecasting the future
environment, modelling the impacts of alternatives, and evaluating the alternatives. Stokey and Zeckhauser (1978)
also set out a five-step process in which the analyst is to: determine the underlying problem and objectives to be
pursued, set out possible alternatives, predict the consequences of each, determine the criteria for measuring the
